Jane Lovas - Creating a Life of Purpose, Passion and Prosperity
1. Introduction
Introducing Jane Lovas, 57, business speaker and consultant. Picture Jane in the front of the room conducting a workshop on goal setting. Her stature at 5' 1" is not imposing. She smiles at participants as they enter. It's 8 a.m. on a cold, gray morning in early January. Jane opens the workshop with some statistics on how setting goals can help you earn more money. As she starts to warm up, she launches into a demonstration about how as a child she learned to balance on a Bongo Board. She spreads her arms and you can see her on that Bongo Board, arms flapping until she is perfectly centered. "But after I learned how to balance, the Bongo Board got boring."
Like the Bongo Board, life tends to keep throwing you off balance. There are successes and failures. Jane tells another story about her own recent efforts to organize a mastermind group. Her goal was to have the group running in three months. She didn't succeed in making her timeframe. She approached the subject with a sense of humor and almost with a sense of joy. "There really is no such thing as failure," Jane announces. "Most of us define success as the ability to do things perfectly the first time...." Here she and a friend in the audience break into a chorus of the Rolling Stones song:
No, you can't always get what you want...
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need.
"I prefer to think of success and failure as research and development," she says. With that introduction and the examples she uses of "failing forward," Jane turns that gray January morning into a day of hope and sunshine. Everyone in the class starts laughing, setting goals and sharing stories.
2. Background
Jane's life is a story about success and failure, about getting up again when she falls and never giving up!
Her first "aha" moment was in June 1961, a warm sunny Saturday morning; she had just turned 8 years old. Her family had moved to a house on Lake Minnetonka (in Minnesota) the summer before. She loved it there; the lake was their front yard; her Dad kept his boat tied up at the dock in front. One day, she and her Dad were walking through the garage when she saw them – blue water skis!
She walked over to work bench – eyes open wide in amazement… She had never seen such a thing - water skis just her size, and blue on top of it, her favorite color.
“Daddy, do you think I could learn to water ski?”
Eighteen tries later...she still hasn't gotten out of the water.
Dad: “Janie, how are you doing? Are you doing OK”
She nods at Dad, tired; gives a thumbs up, breathing heavy, big sigh.
Self Talk: So tired, can’t give up, everyone watching, I can do it, I have to do it (tired, little cry in voice)
The tow rope pops out of her hands again.
Self talk: "Maybe I should just quite, so tired, no one will care, 8 year olds don’t water ski, the skis are so heavy, I’m just a little girl, I can’t do this - No I’m going to do this - I want to wate